Nobody knows who first tossed raisins and nuts into one bag, but National Trail Mix Day on Tuesday, August 31, 2027, honors the result. Even the snack’s names are a puzzle.
The Last Day of August
August 31, every year. No company or hiking club is on record as its founder.
Gorp, Pemmican and Student Food
An older trail food
Long before trail mix, Indigenous peoples in what is now Canada made pemmican. The name comes from the Cree word pimikan, meaning “manufactured grease.”
Dried meat, traditionally bison, was pounded into a coarse powder and mixed with an equal amount of melted fat. Saskatoon berries or cranberries sometimes went in too.
Fur traders adopted it. Peter Pond is credited with bringing pemmican into the trade in 1779. He got it from the Chipewyan in the Athabasca region, The Canadian Encyclopedia says.
It was sewn into bison-hide bags in 41-kilogram lots. That fed voyageurs crossing the prairies, where food could be scarce in winter.
Métis hunters traveled onto the prairie in Red River carts to hunt bison and shipped the pemmican to posts like Fort Garry and Edmonton House.
Britain’s Royal Navy later stocked several Arctic expeditions with beef pemmican made in England.
Student food
Germans call a nut-and-raisin mix Studentenfutter, or “student feed.” Reports from as early as the 18th century claimed almonds could ease a hangover, so hard-drinking students ate them for energy.
Goethe mentioned the habit in his West-Eastern Divan, published in 1819. Raisins and walnuts joined the almonds over the years, along with sultanas.
Almonds were expensive in the 19th century. That made the mix a snack for students wealthy enough to attend university.
Gorp and trail mix
Merriam-Webster dates “gorp,” a snack of high-energy foods such as raisins and nuts, to 1962. Its origin is unknown.
Jack Kerouac described a similar mix in his 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy notes. Some credit two California surfers with inventing trail mix in 1968.
Harmony Foods and Hadley Fruit Orchards have each claimed that 1968 invention, lexicographer Barry Popik found.
“Trail mix” appears in print by 1976. That February, a newspaper in Indiana, Pennsylvania, shared a “Skiers’ Trail Mix” built on raisins.
Why Hikers Still Pack It
Hikers are right there in the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines trail mix as seeds, nuts and dried fruits “eaten as a snack especially by hikers.” By 1981, the Fannie Farmer Cookbook called it “an all-purpose snack.”
The appeal echoes pemmican’s. The Canadian Encyclopedia calls that food dense in protein and energy. It was also easy to store and ship.
Recipes vary endlessly. A November 1976 health-food ad in Long Beach, California, listed raisins, sunflower seeds, peanuts, cashews, walnuts and pumpkin seeds.
Trail Mix Ideas for August 31
- Make the 1976 Long Beach blend: start with raisins, peanuts and sunflower seeds, then add cashews.
- Go Goethe-style: build a mix around almonds, then add sultanas.
- Keep it to gorp basics: raisins and nuts, the core of Merriam-Webster’s definition.
- Add dried berries: a nod to the saskatoons sometimes stirred into pemmican.
- Read The Dharma Bums: look for Kerouac’s version of the trail snack.
- Try a park blend: the Golden Gate conservancy shares recipes like its Mission Blue-berry Blend.
- Eat it at your desk: Fannie Farmer said it had already become an all-purpose snack by 1981.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was “gorp” ever a verb?
Yes. The Oxford English Dictionary cites it in 1913, meaning “to eat greedily.”
Is “Original Trail Mix” trademarked?
A registration for ORIGINAL TRAIL MIX claims first use in commerce in 1977.
What fruits went into pemmican for special occasions?
Cherries, currants, chokeberries or blueberries.
What was the Pemmican Proclamation?
In 1814, Governor Miles Macdonell banned exporting food, including pemmican, from the Red River Colony. It nearly sparked a war with the Métis.